Wikipedia talk:Follow the principle of least astonishment

To accept as a Wikipedia guideline or not

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The WP:Wikimedia Foundation has released resolutions in regard to controversial content "urging" the community to take it on board. WP:POLA is a reflection of the foundations position. This RFC is in regard to the simple question of, shall we accept the foundations recommendation in regards to this resolution and include it as having WP:Guideline status or not? - Youreallycan (talk) 18:25, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Accept as a WP:Guideline as per the Wikimedia Foundation's recommendation.- Youreallycan (talk) 18:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Accept POLA seems common sense to me - but can we actually turn down the foundations 'urging' anyway? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Poorly worded for Wikipedia. Is overridden by Wikipedia:Not censored, which is an actual policy, not a guideline. No guideline should ever be written that would go against a Wikipedia policy.--JOJ ^Hutton 19:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• WP:POLA doesn't go against WP:Not censored at all, not unless you misinterpret "not censored" - not censored is not an allowance to publish anything at all on en wikipedia. Wiki en is a responsible educational website and not the cutting edge of vocal on line freedom. This is a guideline clarification from the foundation that adds clarity to WP:Not censored, rather than overrides that WP:Policy Youreallycan (talk) 19:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not a "guideline" for anything, it's simply a "p.-c." request to "pay particular attention to" something, i.e. a dictat with regard to editorial mental focus. If I want to think about pizza and beer or the plight of homeless Haitians while I'm editing, that's my business, not WMF's. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Reject, tag as {{essay}}, rewrite and start next RfC - now it is report from a WMF meeting "The Wikimedia Foundation something something something". General idea is good Bulwersator (talk) 19:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Reject as written. A guideline can't contradict a policy and there isn't enough detail here for this statement to supplement that policy. In the end, this is a statement of WMF opinion, not a guideline for implementing that opinion by the Wikipedia Community. Imzadi 1979 → 20:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
  • As a second point, this proposal should be moved to a different location to free up the shortcut. Imzadi 1979 → 21:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
    • WP:POLA remains here as a foundation resolution whether or not this en wikipedia rfc supports its inclusion as a WP:Guideline. Youreallycan (talk) 21:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
      • If it continues to exist, it shouldn't be located at WP:POLA. The shortcut should be freed up by moving this page to a full title. Foundation resolutions, not supported by the Wikipedia Community, should be over on meta, not here anyway. Imzadi 1979 → 21:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
        • It exists - there is no competition for this shortcut - (if there is then post it) - also - the foundations resolutions can be posted here - full "community support" is not a requirement. Youreallycan (talk) 21:53, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
          • Well, there is WP:Principle of least astonishment already that would be a contender for the four-letter abbreviation. Now, I've moved this page to what I assume you meant for a full title for this proposed guideline. Now, why do we need a page that restates the WMF's Resolution on controversial content instead of adding a wikilink in an appropriate location, like WP:Offensive material? Imzadi 1979 → 22:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:Principle of least astonishment is a Wikipedia essay only. Association to Wikipedia:Offensive material that is a WP:Guideline was removed and rejected by User:Hobit. Such as that is the reason for this RFC. Let the community reply to the foundation - if the community rejects the foundations good faith "urged resolutions" then the foundation needs to understand that. Youreallycan (talk) 22:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it was more that the person who added it to the other page without prior discussion, and potential or actual involvement in an Arbcom case. We should take the board's resolution, and craft policy/guideline wording through discussion and consensus and add it to the appropriate page. We don't need a separate page full of vague wording that duplicates the purposes and aims of another guideline page. (You did ask me what else could use the POLA shortcut, and I gave you one.) Imzadi 1979 → 22:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The POLA shortcut is not my major focus here. My primary issue is that this and other foundation resolutions resolves as a minimum at a level of WP:Guideline - if the community objects to the foundations resolutions then that will need resolving moving forward, Youreallycan (talk) 22:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

If this RFC fails there WILL be appropriate mention made of the fact on that page, I presume. This "policy resolution" is a fraudulent and undemocratic backdoor attempt to subvert Wikipedia's decision-making process and I'll be god damned if I'm gonna watch a fanatic minority subvert democracy through backdoor machinations agains consensus. Carrite (talk)

• Oppose A very general idea of POLA is fine, and if it specifically applied to Commons, that would be perfectly fine. But the way it is worded here and the way it is abused shows that it should not be policy, especially since it is so poorly defined, even by the Foundation. Specifically, worrying about "least astonishment" and "offense" constrains editors' abilities to write a quality educational encyclopedia. Silverseren^C 20:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Except that it doesn't. [1] [2] -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
• Mark as Wikimedia Foundation guideline It is clear that this is dictum from the WMF, and it is not up to us to be ostriches about it <g>. What we can do is word it as simply as possible, and trust the WMF does not impose something else on us in its stead. Collect (talk) 22:51, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• If they were trying to pass something in relation to editors and such, that would be fine. But we cannot idly stand by and allow the Foundation to make policy about content, policy which is detrimental to the encyclopedia. Silverseren^C 23:16, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Reject The specific "urge the community" wording copied here is from a paragraph which addresses the Commons community. Then there are two individual board members claiming retroactively that it applies to all "projects", when Projects has a whole different meaning in the resolution. Those opinions have no force or effect, for all we know they were the hotheads in the room and the rest of the Board specifically worded it the way they did for a good reason. If the Board really meant to "urge" everyone everywhere, they can bloody well get back together and write that out plainly, or resign and let us elect other people to do it. They can also discuss why Jimbo is saying that "the other projects already generally do a very good job of dealing with these issues" and explain why we suddenly have to go into contortions. That Board resolution supports the principle of least astonishment. Yeah fine, so do we. The way it's being used (distorted?) on en:wiki though, will inevitably lead to every religious group in the world, or their proxies, getting a shot at limiting our content by simply being astonished, astonished!, that we don't present their own world-view. This was an ill-thought resolution if it was intended as some sort of blanket vaguely-worded imprecation for everyone to scurry around and DO SOMETHING. We should just kick it back upstairs, and we can get on with the encyclopedia-building. Franamax (talk) 23:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• reject per Franamax. Who is it we are trying not to astonish? Experts in the field? Believers in a given faith? North Americans? English speakers? It's too vague to be guideline or policy and I worry it will be used to censor our coverage. Hobit (talk) 23:24, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I am unclear whether the proposal relates to style of pages or content. As explained in the page link about POLA, examples given there are about practical page behaviour. I do not oppose a principle that wiki pages should behave in a 'natural' way. However, we seem to be talking about censorship of content so that only content expected by a user will appear on a page. Since users are presumably ignorant about the subject of a page before they read and learn, such a policy is an oxymoron. We cannot accept a policy that essentialy says a page should only contain information which a reader expects. The only way to deal with controversial content is to explain the controversy in detail. It cannot be accepted that such content should be suppressed. Sandpiper (talk) 23:40, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Too early. The background to the resolution is scattered over disparate pages; the meaning of "least astonishment" is still being debated; though I trust Jimbo and Ting Chen to honestly represent their understanding of the meaning of the ambiguous paragraph

  We urge the Commons community to continue to practice rigorous active curation of content, including applying appropriate categorization, removing media that does not meet existing policies and guidelines for inclusion, and actively commissioning media that is deemed needed but missing. We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

  (Does the second sentence refer to the community as a whole, or only Commons?)

Franamax is questioning the intentions of the entire board. There's no rush to insert this into policy; the resolution's been out there since May and clarification of its meaning and discussion about its policy implications are ongoing. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting the full paragraph, though I'd encourage readers to examine the entirety of the Resolution as well. Note too that I intend no disrespect to the two board members who commented later, though I suppose I am dissing the entire board for bad/unclear writing. I'm fine with the general principles, what I would call the "whereas"es of the resolution (the stuff in the top half). It is the "now therefore"s that I have a problem with, I don't read any of those as being a call to action on the part of en:wiki. One of the "therefore"s is also about the image filter (mentioned on this page at present), can't lay my hands on the link, but somewhere on Meta I just read the CEO saying the image filter is stalled because de:wiki sorta threatened to quit en masse if the proposed implementation went through. This is one of those things where it all needs to be done right. Franamax (talk) 02:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The point in question was clarified by both Jimbo and Ting Chen, in the former case at Anthonyhcole's request a few days ago. See [3] which contains links to [4] and [5] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 02:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

And I certainly respect the individual opinions of those editors, and they should have no trouble at all in convincing the Board to issue a clarification, speaking as a whole. After all, that's the entire purpose of a board. Note how Jimbo takes care to be "speaking for myself" in your link above, and earlier advises against reading tea-leaves - which we seem to be doing again in parsing exactly what these two have "clarified". So we're left with an unsatisfactory situaton, which I suggest either the Board resolve, or we dismiss pending definitive clarification. I'd be happy to modify policy to comply with a binding resolution of the WMF Board - if I knew what the heck it was. Franamax (talk) 03:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, WP:JIMBO seems to have special powers on Wikipedia, so he might not need the full board. However, whether his powers still include policy making by fiat or not [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Request_for_clarification:_Jimbo_as_policy_maker|is something thatt a policy and there isn't enoug{smiley}} ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Ambiguous, vague, poorly worded, potentially in conflict with existing policy, this is in no respect ready for primetime. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. There's nothing here to implement. "Follow the principle of least astonishment" is the only thing that can be picked out of the statement as potentially implementable, but the problem is, what is least astonishing? I'm an inclusionist and I say that it would be astonishing for syphilis not to have pictures of syphilis or cock and ball torture not to have one or more images of a genital getting "tortured". "Astonishment" is a code word for "implement your own prejudices", perhaps with the implication, unspecified, that some people's prejudices will be ascendant over others. But that still doesn't explain when that is so. It's a useless guideline; we would each interpret it to mean whatever we think already. Wnt (talk) 05:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC) (to be fair, it has more meaning in the context of Commons categorization; this whole missive seems largely if not entirely addressed at Commons)

• Reject - In my opinion this is a Muhammed-images-related proposal, an attempt to subvert Wikipedia's normal decision-making process with executive edict: (1) Aggrieved minority screams for redress on Talk:Jimbo Wales; (2) Jimbo Wales concurs; (3) Ukaze appears from Wikimedia Foundation implementing new "policy" without discussion. That's what's going on here. It is undemocratic and it must be fought tooth and nail. We don't need "benevolent sovereigns" ad-libbing policy to address the concerns of factions, we need constitutional and democratic decision-making. Carrite (talk) 05:08, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Um, "Wikipedia is not a democracy"? (also policy, like WP:NOTCENSORED). Just sayin... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Ummm, Wikipedia works on consensus decision-making among the community, not arbitrary fiat received from San Francisco or London because somebody in the office has an inkling to change things. Carrite (talk) 05:26, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately - no, it doesn't. The Foundation actually controls resources etc. You can argue about whether this is moral, legitimate etc or not, but that is the way it is. Somewhere or other (can't be bothered to find it) there is an essay describing your 'rights' on wikipedia: you have two - the right to fork (and set up your own alternative), and the right to leave. A little less hyperbole about 'democracy', and a little more attention to the fact that we are writing an online encyclopaedia rather than constructing a new-model utopia might actually help here... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:You don't own Wikipedia. However, don't ignore that the WMF backed down before when confronted with overwhelming community consensus, like with the image filter on the de.wiki: [6]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:42, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The idea of WMF "ownership" of Wikipedia is overrated. Yes, WMF owns servers, collects donations, and many other things; nonetheless, the main asset of the site is the content, which by design is free, and the editors produce that. In theory, the editors might be able to arrange some kind of Wikipedia substitute spread out among mirror sites and free Wikis, but the WMF can't do much without us. Of course, the reality is, if we fight each other that hard, we all lose pretty badly. But the WMF 'urging' people is not exactly a war to the knife. Wnt (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support in principle, though Anthony and others are right that there is still work to be done. However, that work may progress more swiftly if it is clear that it will be a guideline. "Least surprise" should be defined through reliable sources – our presentation of a topic should be broadly consistent with how the most reputable mainstream, authoritative sources (including significant minority viewpoints) present the same topic, etc. --JN466 08:04, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
  • My understanding is that POLA is only defined in the context of user interfaces in reliable sources. How to map that to social controversies where various groups have different expectations is not something that can be easily inferred. Perhaps you know of more research or care to propose a wording? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:37, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
• Reject, mainly per Franamax -- it's not a coherent idea, it hasn't been adopted via a legitimate process, and it is inconsistent with more important principles. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:05, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
• Reject. Too many avenues for censorship enabled by a vague principle.—Kww(talk) 16:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
• Comment If this is being imposed by the WMF, I question whether this RFC is even valid at all. Jtrainor (talk) 22:50, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• I think thats the point. The foundation only "urges" the community to implement. What support anything they "urge" has amongst the community is what is being questioned in this RFC. Ask yourself, if the foundation wants the project to move in a certain direction, or to consider certain issues with greater sensitivity, how much weight do you, or the community apply to that guidance? Youreallycan (talk) 23:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

"Certain issues" being Muhammad Pictures, by any chance? Carrite (talk) 09:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I personally have never posted a single comment about the pictures of Muhammad and I have no personal position about that issue. I have read a couple of the discussions and imo a good intellectual case has been made to reduce the number of pictures in that article. That is with or without any foundation resolution being accepted as a guideline or not. I think as a community there is a good case for us to be generally accepting of the guidance from the hub of the project, they are the people with a deep understanding of issues restricting growth, and the long term stability of the project. Taking a position of, reject, they will use it to remove a couple of pics here and there is imo a short term tunnel vision view. We are not an activist, free speech, publish and be damned site, we are educationally biased. Not censored as you know does not interpret as you can add anything you can find in a wikipedia reliable source, we are already requested to use responsible editorial control. This is not some fearful statement to support censorship, it's just a clarification of foundation guidance in relation to sensitive and contentious content. Youreallycan (talk) 11:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• Reject. In general, there are some good arguments here against adopting this as a guideline, and the best argument against is 'lack of clarity' -- it is unclear what exactly parts of the Board's statement mean, and it is unclear that it was intended to apply to the English (or any other) Wikipedia. With regard to the specific elephant in the room (images of Muhammad), while I would prefer that a reasonable spectrum of representations of Muhammad remain in the article and given that this is a non-legal issue, a consensus decision by en-Wikipedians that most or all of the images must go is preferable in the long run to any imposed decision from the WMF board, even one that I would ordinarily agree with. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 23:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I think this needs a rewrite. If its given one I'll support, but not in its current state. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Be WP:BOLD! ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I'd be OK if it specifically excluded religious content from its scope--GrapedApe (talk) 19:38, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
  • There's an interesting background to that. The Harries report recommended such an exclusion. [7] But the WMF Controversial Content Working Group specifically dismissed that recommendation. [8] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose As per the German wikipedia's rejection of the WMF proposal. That is to say that I don't agree that what has been proposed by WMF on this isn't, in fact, a form of censorship, and one that stands contrary to many of the older principles and policies that make this project work. I think the wikipedians at de.wiki had the right idea.--Xomic_Talk 04:22, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Conflicts with existing policy, which actually has served us pretty well. Besides, "astonishment" is subjective. And bullet point 6 in the WMF resolution contains wording—"when first viewing the image"—that's pretty scary. Rivertorch (talk) 09:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose - It just boils down to "hey, it looks like we accomplished something" jargon by the WMF. The issue with nekkid chicks at pregnancy was solved via discussion there at the talk page, the Mihammad kerfuffle is winding down. We don't need yet another dumb wiki-acronym to throw at each other when deciding content usage in the project. Tarc (talk) 13:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Everything relevant to what everybody here states/implies/assumes this is about is already covered by WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:DUE. As it's really not clear whether this contradicts either or both of these (or indeed whether it is compatible with WP:NPOV) or not (evidence: all the discussions and requests for clarification about it), nor do people agree about what it means, adopting this as a guideline or similar is clearly not going to help promote agreement at all. While hopefully not as extreme, I am seeing parallels with the userbox wars where the (now repealed) CSD criterion for "divisive and inflammatory templates" caused more divisiveness than the problem it attempted to solve. Thryduulf (talk) 17:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Reject. I have no problem with the resolution, but this proposed guideline as currently worded is simply too vague and incoherent to be of any use. --Michig (talk) 22:08, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Reject. Actually, I support a fair bit of the ideas contained within it, but the image hiding feature is problematic. As I have described in greater detail elsewhere, such a feature will, in my opinion, unavoidability lead to content bias around (to pick an example) sexual orientation, and is as a result is at odds with WP:NPOV. --joe decker^{talk to me} 07:01, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
• Disagree in this form. I agree with most of the resolution, including the principle of least astonishment and the need for rigorous active curation of content, but I do not think that an image hiding feature is a good answer to the problem of content disagreements. We forbid content forks because we expect people to work on one consensus version. Image hiding would implement content forking (a version with or without images) at the technical level.  Sandstein  08:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose (1) Contentious phrase, (2) synonym for "plz avoid offending anyone", a very bad path to head down and one which some will try to push if allowed, (3) sometimes consensus may feel that content and layout which is not "least astonishing" is more appropriate and I rate consensus and NPOV and "being an encyclopedia" over this, and in any case (4) this proposal isn't a proposal or a guideline, it doesn't specify or urge any action, it just summarizes a deliberation. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Rewriting it in the imperative is the trivial part, e.g. "In accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation Resolution on controversial content, editors must pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, particularly that of a sexual, violent or religious nature. Editors must determine whether controversial material has a realistic educational use, and must apply the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement." The less trivial part is finding the exact principle that the board urges us to implement. The question on the binding status of the supporting documents detailing that (WG report, referendum FAQ) remains open. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:44, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it can be rewritten that way but it hasn't. It's hard to comment on a proposal that's not yet a proposal. However even if written as a proposal my other concerns stand. Fundamentally I'm not okay with the core of it, "must apply..." I just don't agree with "must", or that it's clear-cut, for reasons stated. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:58, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, I recognize that Wikipedia is probably pushed from all kind of lobbyists to finally do something against the "offensive" images, but that doesn't at all mean we have to accept this WMF guideline here. In fact, this guideline wasn't even developed by the local consensus, but by the Wikimedia Foundation, and in general we shouldn't accept any such guideline. But even if this guideline was, I had to reject it, because adopting this guideline makes us even more open for lobbyism and manipulation from outside, thus going against the core principle of a neutral point of view. Even though the latter isn't even perfectly implemented, we shouldn't make it any worse. As of now, the guideline as proposed has only a minority support locally, and in fact, within due time at least, it will always appear—even if it might not be the case—as if pushed from outside. BTW, I'd just be curious which sort of lobbyists want to see this guideline applied here. --The Evil IP address (talk) 09:23, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose: this document doesn't instruct, it informs of the decision. In order to become a guideline this document has to explain the relation of the principle of least astonishment to the editing practices on Wikipedia. And only then it can actually be discussed as guideline to be accepted or rejected. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm strongly in favour of the Principle Of Least Astonishment (POLA), but this isn't what I think of as POLA. As far as I'm concerned POLA already applies. If I click on someone's userpage I don't expect to see a porn collection, especially if they ever edit outside of that topic. Equally if I search this site for various terms related to erotica I would be astonished if we had written such articles as if this was intended for an audience of 7 year olds. Perhaps we need a guideline that covered issues such as the wording of links, or are we already following commonsense and if so would this be unnecessary wp:creep? I'm not aware of people using photographs of sex toys to illustrate articles about electricity, nor photos of scantily clad pornstars in the articles about their home town or highschool. My reading of this proposed guideline is that it is intended to censor contentious articles, not to make sure that you only see porn images if you click on a link that one would reasonably expect might lead to a porn image. ϢereSpielChequers 17:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Although it could be seen as somewhat wp:creepy, one thing that occurred to me would be to start over with a ground-up proposed guideline that just seeks to describe the current practice on the English Wikipedia project, with zero reference to what the Foundation may or may not be saying. To me, it's pretty clear that we already do use common sense in our editorial decisions pretty darn well. Maybe we can agree as a community what practices are commonly accepted, and how some edge cases have been successfully dealt with? That could form an actual guideline, though I'll note from my own experience that developing a new guideline is at minimum a year-long project. Franamax (talk) 03:14, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers & Franamax, we already have a guideline for what you describe since October 2011, see WP:GRATUITOUS. However it doesn't go as far the WMF resolution, e.g. it does not talk about "potentially controversial material", particularly religious material. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 10:18, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, hadn't seen that and it does cover part of my point. But there is the issue of links. Most of the time it will be obvious from the name of the link, but it seems sensible to me that if you link from a noncontentious article to a contentious one there should be something in the link that hints - for example if an actress in a children's program subsequently appeared in adult films then it seems sensible to me that her article be organised so that kids would be clear which links went to other kids movies she'd appeared in and which went to "adult" films. Not sure how to word such a guideline, and maybe better to expand gratuitous than amend this proposal. But that's what I interpret POLA as being. ϢereSpielChequers 21:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose: Conflicts with policy at WP:NOT#CENSORED, and isn't written in a way that can be applied as a guideline anyhow. Asking "the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content" is just public relations spin, not actionable guidance, since no one but an imaginary magic power could know what anyone is "paying particular attention to", and paying attention doesn't imply actually doing anything with a result outside one's own head. A deeper problem is that there is no topic and no content that is not "potentially controversial" to someone, somewhere. There are people who espouse the belief that the world is flat, that being blind or deaf is no form of disability, that babies are born evil and doomed to eternal suffering sould they die without rituals first being performed on them, etc., etc. It is completely impossible to account for and work around all possible prejudices and nonsense, and it isn't an encyclopedia's job to aid and abet disinformation but to dispel it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
• Confused: I'm not opposed to something like this in principle, but the wording as-is is far too vague. Selery (talk) 16:16, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Controversy" is in the eye of the beholder. "Controversy" can be generated by small groups of determined noisemakers. WP:NOTCENSORED has done a reasonable job of keeping "controversy" reasonably confined, specifically because it does not provide for mechanisms under which the makers of "controversy" can demand new categories or technical features. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 21:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. Current psychological research results "confirms that there are universal ethical principles based on shared human values across cultures". (IAAP Handbook of Applied Psychology 2011) It is easy, therefore, to imagine that the principle of least astonishment is not vague or imprecise as the editors above are claiming, but is in fact easily defined and measured across cultures. Viriditas (talk) 09:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Can you explain to us what are the universally shared religious values? And how would we apply this principle for instance to the images of Muhammad given that the same source says "such studies have serious limitations when it comes to the identification of universal principles because codes of ethics from the West are more prevalent and hence tend to be overrepresented in these studies"? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

RfC responses summary

Respondents clearly display confusion about the resolution's meaning, whether it addresses this project and whether we're obliged to follow it. Many note that it appears to contradict existing policy. All of these points need to be made very clear before this can be profitably put before an RfC. Probably, the perceived conflict between WP:NOTCENSORED and the Foundation's resolution needs a community discussion in its own right; preceded by discussion amongst ourselves and with the Board, to clarify the meanings of terms.

• can we actually turn down the foundations 'urging' anyway?
• Poorly worded for Wikipedia.
• rewrite and start next RfC
• Reject as written
• so poorly defined, even by the Foundation.
• It is clear that this is dictum from the WMF, and it is not up to us to be ostriches about it
• The specific "urge the community" wording copied here is from a paragraph which addresses the Commons community.
• It's too vague to be guideline or policy
• I am unclear whether the proposal relates to style of pages or content.
• Ambiguous, vague, poorly worded
• "Astonishment" is a code word for "implement your own prejudices"
• it's not a coherent idea, it hasn't been adopted via a legitimate process,
• a vague principle
• If this is being imposed by the WMF
• the best argument against is 'lack of clarity'
• I think this needs a rewrite.
• contrary to many of the older principles and policies that make this project work.
• this proposed guideline as currently worded is simply too vague and incoherent
• Disagree in this form
• it doesn't specify or urge any action, it just summarizes a deliberation.
• this guideline wasn't even developed by the local consensus, but by the Wikimedia Foundation, and in general we shouldn't accept any such guideline.
• this document has to explain the relation of the principle of least astonishment to the editing practices on Wikipedia. And only then it can actually be discussed as guideline to be accepted or rejected.

  --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:30, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

If you reject the Resolution, you are in violation of WMF's (future) Terms of Use, and thus you may be banned

See m:Terms of use#11. Resolutions and Project Policies and the sections above and below that for possible consequences. Thanks to User:WhatamIdoing for pointing this to me. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• "Some of these policies may be mandatory" Bulwersator (talk) 07:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • And you may (not shall) be banned. Don't you love lawyers? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
    • It's also interesting, that according to wmf:Resolutions and wmf:Policies#Policies, this isn't an official policy, because it's not listed on neither of them. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?}
      • Sure it is. It's the first one listed at wmf:Resolutions#May_2011. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:17, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
        • wmf:Resolution:Controversial content in no way contain any resolution to create new guidelines or policies. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 19:39, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• Some are still questioning whether the May 2011 resolution applies to this project. I have no doubt, given that two signatories have said as much. But it would be helpful to hear it from the Board as a whole, to put that doubt to rest.

Is this resolution mandatory? I would really appreciate an explicit statement from the Board on that point, too. Timidity on that point will just drag out this discussion into next year. Does anybody think we should put these two questions to the board now? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

What is the official venue for such requests for clarification to be filed in? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 08:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)As "Some of these policies may be mandatory" and there is no information that this thing is mandatory - I think that we may tag it with {{essay}} and/or {{rejected}}, close discussions on this page and and do something useful. Bulwersator (talk) 08:03, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking of emailing Sue Gardner and asking her to pass it up to the Board for consideration at their next scheduled meeting. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• Is this some sort of threat, in regards to this discussion? Silverseren^C 11:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I don't know. It depends how adamantly the WMF intends to enforce their ToU and Resolution(s). Good faith criticism of their decisions is explicitly excluded as grounds for blocking/banning (see point 10 in the proposed ToU), however refusal to go along isn't. So, I guess we shall live and see what happens after the new ToU is in place. ¶ However, WhatamIdoing has argued that this whole discussion is going to be null and void because anyone continuing to edit under the new ToU is implicitly giving legal assent to follow all WMF resolutions. [9] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Well, clearly then, the answer is that we have to go on strike to get the ToU repealed. :) Silverseren^C 20:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Which returns me to Mark as Wikimedia Foundation guideline as I said above. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:39, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Disagree strongly. Unless and until it is mandatory on community websites (as NPOV is^[10][11][12]) it has no weight here beyond that which the community wishes to give it. Either the community here endorses it (in which case "WMF guideline" is secondary) or the community here doesn't. In the latter case if this concept doesn't have mandatory force or community support here, then tagging a page on it as a "WMF guideline" is irrelevant or confusing, and could imply an authoritative standing it doesn't have. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:02, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

NPOV is not a mandatory policy: an emphatic statement by the god-king is not the same as a formal resolution by the Board of Trustees. meta:NPOV lists many Wikimedia projects that have rejected NPOV, including Commons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• The primary problem is that "least astonishment" is so ill-defined as to be entirely vacuous. At best, it's so vague and subjective as to become completely bereft of meaning, and at worst it's just a vague catch-all designed to blanket anything someone doesn't like. — Coren ^(talk) 16:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • We did have one example in the WP:NOT discussion when someone tried to prevent a fact (not image) from being included in the lead of an article arguing that it violated the principle of least astonishment. Search for "mass murder" in Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 38 to find it. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Well said, Coren. Jclemens (talk) 04:08, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
• If I decide to repeatedly replace all the lede images in our power tool articles with pictures of topless women holding the tools (and looking at the walls of any automotive shop, it's clear that only topless women actually use these tools), I already know I'm going to get banned, resolution or not. What are you going to do, double ban me? Franamax (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
• This seems like a rather poor attempt at trolling the issue. The resolution was to encourage the community to apply the principle of least astonishment, not to require editors to follow any particular policy. Kaldari (talk) 06:15, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
• Duh. May, not shall. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
• "We have an offer you can't refuse."

--The Evil IP address (talk) 09:30, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

• The text right below the subsection name shows complete lack of understanding of the matter discussed. While Wikipedians have to abide the resolutions of WMF, the text of guidelines is a matter of discussion. Right now this guideline is so completely improper worded, that supporting it constitutes a severe violation of WP:GUIDELINE, so I'm not really sure whether there is an excuse for not banning its supporters. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
• <moved>ϢereSpielChequers 17:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  • You might want to move Your comment to the previous section. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Motion to close

Hi, I have been nudged to close this. I was wrong to open it, it was too soon - the whole issue needs discussion and development. To paraphrase AnthonyCole, - Almost every respondent to this RfC expressed confusion and misunderstanding about fundamental aspects of the resolution: whether it applies to this project, whether it's optional, the meaning of terms, etc, etc. It is much too early for this RfC. Running it now, with this level of ignorance and uncertainty surrounding it is poisoning any possibility of a thoughtful and informed result.

• As I opened it I will wait for any objections to my closing it. I want to close it as no consensus- RFC was premature. - right now it's basically an essay, so no objection to anyone marking it as such. Youreallycan 19:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not really of the opinion that the RFC was premature. In this form, the content was rejected as a guideline. If someone wants to work on new content and try to get a consensus to build a guideline around it, they should feel free to go ahead. There's nothing about closing this RFC as "oppose" that precludes attempting to gain consensus for a different guideline in the future.—Kww(talk) 20:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• I've asked an uninvolved admin (at WP:AN) to close it. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• This proposal has been rejected -pretty easy call on the consensus here. R. Baley (talk) 21:55, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Some Arbitrators consider this policy already

[13]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I'm gonna see what I can do to get that section removed. Silverseren^C 07:50, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrator Jclemens has clarified that they interpret POLA as the inclusion of images too. A bit different than how it's currently worded, but I like the idea. Silverseren^C 18:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Knee jerk opposition a bit addressed then. "Taking a position of, reject, they will use it to remove a couple of pics here and there is imo a short term tunnel vision view." 1 Jan 2011, Youreallycan Youreallycan 18:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom doesn't set policy, the community does. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

And the WMF does too, overriding the community. See [14] for some elaboration. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

POLA Express

Suggestion: To replace the failed proposal in toto with a draft to be determined here.

First suggestion:

The Principle of Least Astonishment, simply stated, is that material used in articles should be chosen to maximize the educational value of the article.

To that end, categorization, images (including sexual images) and claims which disparage groups, religions or any other category of persons should be extremely carefully weighed and avoided if any dispute exists, unless the educational value of the article as a whole is 'significantly' improved by such.

To "astonish" any such group by any use of such categorization, image, or claim, without such strong basis and consensus therefor, is improper.

The Wikimedia Foundation is designing a mw:personal image filter which may at some point be used to supplement this (proposed principle).

Collect (talk) 12:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"avoided if any dispute exists" -- an obstructionists' charter. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

then what wording would you use? Collect (talk) 13:49, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Better suggestion

“ The Wikimedia Foundation has urged us to take into account the "Principle of Least Astonishment". They have used this term in a fashion unrelated to the traditional definitions of the phrase. Further, they have articulated this principle in such a way as to contradict long-standing English Wikipedia policies, such as WP:NOT#CENSORED. As a result, the English Wikipedia community has rejected this urging. This rejection does not in any way lessen existing English Wikipedia policies that require us to examine relevance of content and imagery and to avoid attacking any groups. ”

I think this language sums up our correct position with regard to POLA.—Kww(talk) 13:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

First of all, ArbCom essentially has endorsed some sense of POLA as applying in the current proposed decisionon a case. The first version was rjected, but that does not mean the principle per the WMF ceases to exist - thus an attempt to find wording which covers their primary concerns, but which would also pass muster with the community. Collect (talk) 13:49, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"...essentially has endorsed some sense ..." has enough disclaimers to illustrate my point. We have explicit policies in this area that work well enough, and the WMF resolution doesn't have enough meat or force to add any value.—Kww(talk) 14:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

megaPOLA

[15]. They forgot to sue the WMF, apparently. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)